WHEN James McIvor left The Scottish Sun last month, his colleagues presented him with a spoof front page of his newspaper, with a little dig that he was about to pen some children’s books.
He is. But he has also set himself up in business to produce spoof newspaper front pages himself.
The former chief sub-editor at Kinning Park has set up Scooped!, providing ‘personalised newspaper and magazine gifts for all occasions’.
Said McIvor: “I’m sure I’m not the first journalist to consider producing these pages as gifts to the general public – in fact, when I handed in my notice at The Sun I soon lost count of the number of colleagues who told me they had looked into doing just that.”
Already, he has deals in place with football’s SPL clubs, English Premier League clubs and Coca-Cola Championship clubs to produce spoof newspapers as official club merchandise. It means fans will be able to ‘sign for’ their club, ‘buy’ their club or be named their club’s ‘No1 fan’.
Then there’s the usual array of Valentine’s Day gifts, good luck messages, etc.
McIvor is also a director of new publishing company, Benchmark Books Ltd.
He adds: “One of the other Benchmark directors is Michael Martin who works on the back bench at the Mirror in London. We produce illustrated children’s sports books and currently have four titles out: The Story of Celtic, The Story of Rangers, The Story of Liverpool and The Story of Manchester United. The Story of the Scotland national team is due out on March 31 to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the Wembley Wizards.”
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